Anna From Away

by D. R. MacDonald

  “Different time, Murdock.”

  “Is that all you can say? It’s that simple? Connie is dead.”

  “I’ve got to go, I’ve got to get out of here.” He started to back away.

  “I bet you do. I know what happened, Livingstone. What you landed here.”

  “Where is it? And what washed ashore at your granny’s? You going to turn me in?”

  “Stay away from Anna Starling.”

  “I told you, it’s not just me! Jesus. There’s damn few houses along here, Murdock. Hers is one of them.”

  “Bad guesses, that’s all you’ve got. With the tides here, that stuff could have washed in anywhere.”

  “So, you know what we’re searching for, what it looks like?”

  “Billy described it, to Anna.”

  “Billy! God, he’s useless, useless!“

  Murdock tossed the coiled rope into the boat. “There’s a service for Connie in a little while. I don’t suppose you’ll be there.”

  “Hanging around here now is a bad idea, Murdock.”

  “It is. In your case.”

  “I’ll send Billy. He’s sleeping it off.”

  “Sure you will.”

  He watched Livingstone pick his way up the bank path toward the woods, pause to whack sand from a cuff. “Don’t row that thing too far, Murdock!” he called back. “You’re a long way from help!”

  “I could row you to hell, Livingstone!”

  “But you couldn’t row back! Don’t forget your nitro, old man!”

  Old man. Okay. Jesus, he’d like to put a leash on that young pup’s neck. He’d known Livingstone since he was a tyke, known his father, killed in a mine accident, and his mother, a calm, pretty woman concerned about her kids. Distasteful to be the one who turned him in. And how much evidence was there to set against his denials, apart from Anna’s little prize in her closet? Left something with her in the cold months, did he? Revenge would be sweet, for dancing with Anna Starling on a winter night, in the light of a candle, dancing her off God knew where. But too much was uncertain. Where were the witnesses? Once the bundles left here, they could be hidden in any town, or more likely trucked off the Island. And Anna’s bale had no name and address.

  THEY WERE COMING up the hill on a foggy morning, in ones and twos for Connie Sinclair’s memorial, not many, tramping slowly up the narrow cemetery road along the wet grass of the treadway, he could hear their voices soft in the damp air. Red Murdock, the first there, opened the green wrought-iron gate fastened with a loop of rope. He hadn’t been here since Rosaire was alive. He meandered toward the MacLennan graves in the northeast corner, the oldest a humble limestone whose name went back 130 years to the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, so blurred you’d have to kneel and make it out with your fingers. His granny’s was partly obscured by a bush of scarlet peonies Murdock had transplanted there years ago. Loved and Remembered, that’s all she’d wanted. His father’s was red granite too, polished, his name stood out, but there was no woman’s along with it as on others. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Murdock had long wondered where his mother lay, among what far-away people. Did her stone mention this place that had shaped so much of her? Doubtful. She’d wanted only to get away, to cut herself off. He, the last of these MacLennans, had made no provision for his own burial, he didn’t care anymore, someone would take him up and put him where he needed to be. Rosaire had told him to plant her ashes wherever he wished, and he had. Through a thin row of spruce, mist, white as steam, hung over the water.

  Down below at the point, the beach where Anna swam every day was empty, and he regretted he had not stopped at her house, disgusted though he was with her stubbornness, the risk she refused to free herself from. He had thought she would come around if he left her alone for a day or so, let the danger sink in, but he’d heard nothing from her and that worried him. She was on his mind too much anyway. What was the right thing to do? What line in her life should he cross? He had walked to her shorebank three times and seen her once up above kneeling at her garden, another going up her path in a swimsuit that she looked more than all right in. But he hadn’t wanted to talk to her, it was as if someone he didn’t care for was standing between them and couldn’t be ignored, not if they were to get back to where they had been. What was occurring up here on the hill this morning of course had nothing to do with her, not in any direct way at least.…

  There were voices behind him and he turned to them, the greetings began, people he hadn’t seen in a long while took hold of his hand.

  The Ferguson brothers from the other side, lean Johnny, his hair kinky grey, and older Willy all but bald, a shine of damp on his big amiable scalp. Some others in from town, Al McCulloch, Connie’s distant cousin, a big, quiet man, and Sally MacCuish, silver-haired and rounder, still pretty, smoking furiously, dropping her cigarette to hug him, and, when they were younger, hug him she had. Murdock had a soft spot for Sal, she was fun and kind and loved a man in her arms, but she was a talker who’d pull back in the middle of sex just to tell you she’d got a speeding ticket, she couldn’t keep the mood, daily life wouldn’t let go of her long enough. She’d slept with Connie too, always liked him, and someone said to her, You must have some great pillow talk with that fella, and Sal said, A good man, he doesn’t have to say a word.

  A hard-bitten woman from The Mines hung back pulling on a cigarette, her companion a skinny pale man beside her, old drinking pals of Connie who used to visit him. You’d hear them up the hill shouting drunk. At least they’d showed.

  “They could just as easily pickled him,” Sam Cunningham said, “cheaper too.”

  The men huddled around him laughed low, they knew Connie wouldn’t give a damn what they said. Yes, he’d bowed his head and prayed like the rest of them when it suited, so were they raised, but to Connie funerals and wakes had been just another reason, for a man who no longer needed any, to drink himself dumb. But they all wanted to hear how Murdock found him, since rumours had raced around—Connie had been shot before he fell into the ditch, that he had taken his life, that he’d had a stroke—but Murdock didn’t feed the gossip, he gave them only the bare bones, nothing they could chew on: the Mounties were looking for a vehicle that might have struck him, but what had they to run with? No one saw or heard a thing. He did not mention that Connie might have helped out drug smugglers, he didn’t want to open that nest of hornets. Anna had already been stung.

  “A full ashtray in the Legion bar, all that’s left of him now, old Con,” said Willy, nodding toward the small varnished box with a brass plate and handles. It sat on the turf beside a high snowball bush past its blooming. Murdock could have made a better box, had he been asked, had there been time. But who would have asked him? Connie had no one in Cape Seal now but Peter Ingraham, an old buddy, who had arranged this modest memorial.

  “Calmed him down some though, didn’t it?” Archie Fleming said. “No Roaring Connie this morning.”

  “There’s nothing half-assed about ashes,” Johnny said.

  “Are you going under whole?” Archie said, turning to Sal.

  “Oh,” Sal said, “I don’t even think about that,” her high cheeks blushing as if he’d asked what underwear she was wearing.

  “Better decide soon, girl, we’re not none of us getting young,” George Fraser said. “I’m not keen, myself, to be burnt like the Sunday papers.”

  “You’ll feed the worms then, boy,” Johnny said.

  “You seen those caskets they make now? By the time a worm chews through that, you won’t be worrying and neither will anybody else.”

  “Poor Connie,” Sal said. “You couldn’t reach him those last years, not at all.”

  “If you couldn’t reach him, Sal, nobody could.”

  “It’s ashes for Connie anyway. He didn’t want the big hole.”

  “I don’t think he wanted to die in a ditch either,” Murdock said.

  “It was quick anyway. Not a bad way to go,” Sal said.

  �
�He wasn’t ready to go, I don’t think,” Murdock said. “And how quick was it? We don’t know.”

  “Going along the road, looking for another drink, I suppose,” Johnny said.

  “No,” Murdock said. “It wasn’t just that.”

  He moved away toward Donald John and Molly when he saw them making their way up the hill.

  “Where’s Willard?” Murdock said.

  “Oh, he’s coming on slow. There he is,” Molly said. They waited until he waved them toward him, off to the side on the grass.

  “Listen,” he said, pausing for breath. “They’ve got Billy Buchanan.”

  “Who’s got him?” Donald John said, shifting his cane.

  “Mounties. Took him away a little while ago.”

  “Just him?” Murdock said.

  “At Sandy’s alone, nobody but him. Some of that gang that used to come and go tore out yesterday, no sign of them.”

  “Took him what for?” Molly said.

  “Billy’s truck, you see, he liked to show it off, eh? You know, you’ve seen it out front the house there, that proud pile of metal. But then he takes to hiding it in the little backyard there, you could barely spy the ass end of her. I think that’s odd, I says to the constable when he come to my door, looking into Connie’s case. He said show me. We go over. There’s Billy in the house making like he’s not home. The constable, he checks the pickup, looks it over real slow, careful, doesn’t say a word. Then he rousts Billy out. He was a wreck, face all puffy, like he hadn’t slept in a year.”

  Someone yelled over to them they were starting soon, and Murdock raised a hand, “We’re coming!”

  “Go on, Willard,” Donald John said.

  “The Mountie says, There’s blood in your headlight rim, Billy. You want to talk about it? Terrible liar, Billy, twisted himself in knots. Next thing you know there’s tears down his cheeks, he didn’t mean to, an accident. Some hard fellas at the house had it in for Connie, they told Billy go fetch him, bring him back. Billy sees him on the road, late, up by your place, Murdock.”

  “Yes, we almost run over him one night, he staggered in front of the car,” Molly said.

  “But Billy’s drunk himself, see, he clips Connie with the truck too hard, sends him flying into the ditch. Just wanted to knock him over like, he said, Connie could fight like a bastard, you know? So he panicked, took off. Anyway, the Mountie cuffed him, put him in the car.”

  “Haven’t seen Livingstone?” Murdock said.

  “Billy might’ve warned him. He had time before the constable banged on his door. They was dealing drugs there, at Sandy’s.”

  “Is it all over then?” Molly said. “Are they all off the road?”

  “We’ll see,” Murdock said, certain someone would be back for that goddamned bale, smugglers or police. Depended what they pumped out of Billy, how much he wanted to tell and how soon he told it.

  “They won’t be at Sandy’s anymore, that’s something,” Donald John said. He pointed his cane at the gathering in the cemetery. “Looks like Peter’s ready.”

  There was no minister for Connie’s interment, so the remarks fell to Peter Ingraham, his last and final pal. Peter, known as a bit of a poet, a man fluent with words, greeted everyone with an earnest handshake and moved quickly into the cemetery where he stood, in his clean second-hand suit, near the graves of other Sinclairs. His thin black hair was damp and combed slick.

  “My friends, you know,” he said, “I couldn’t make a poem for this day, this morning. Some kind of nice rhyme, it wouldn’t do, I think, not for Connie. Sometimes we can’t match one side of a man to the other, hard to think of nice words that’d come together, in some sweet way. But that’s all right, for a man of contradictions. He could be a charmer or a bastard, you could love him and you could want to wring his neck. But that’s over. It’s easy to be righteous about a drinking man, isn’t it though? But this is Con’s time, this morning, here in this spot where we’re gathered. Did he not love to run here as a boy, swim right down there at the point? This water, these woods, this mountain, he knew them, and they knew him. He went away, and he came back. So it is fitting he should find his rest here, in this place. Death is a humble time. There are better deaths than Connie met, that’s all we know of it. Let’s not judge him harshly. This man hurt those who loved him, and who were loved by him, true. We know that. But so too was he hurt, he endured rakes and jibes all his life. Words would not fly from his lips, but liquor gave them wings. He could have done better with his life if liquor were not in the world at all, at all. But it is, now and forever. Deny its power if you can. Now God’s love has taken Con up. Why the Lord took him the way he did we can never know. Who was the instrument of it? God, in time, will out them. There is no time where Connie is, just love. His broken body will be made whole, his broken spirit will rise up. If he was next to me now, he’d be whispering, Peter, cut it short, boy, Jesus, I’m terrible thirsty. I will do that for him, for you, Connie. Your thirst is over.” Peter raised his face to the soft mist. “Oh, merciful God, forgive Connie Sinclair, forgive us, sad sinners that we are. You have taken our friend to your eternal heart. He is washed clean. He was a good man brought low by a weakness, and the weaknesses of others, and who among us has never been? Amen.”

  Murdock joined the mumbled amens, wondering if they would dare return, Livingstone, his pals. Not before nightfall, even were they sure Anna had what they wanted. They would stay out of sight for a while, with Billy in the cooler, maybe squawking away.

  His attention wandered to the beach in the lee of the point: a dark-haired woman was unwrapping a towel from her waist. Anna. There she was. A great feeling of relief rose in him, and, he had to recognize as well, desire, a yearning from his dreams. He had never seen her swim though he knew she did. He watched her pause at the water’s edge, her head lowered as she took a cautious step. The skin of her back was darker now from the sun. She dove and he could just hear her limbs thrashing the water. How he’d loved in the morning to kiss Rosaire’s back, the smooth curve of her spine, then hold her in a blissful spoon—another small thing desperately missed, it slipped unbidden into his mind. Sorry, Connie. No disrespect.

  The small crowd broke and took up talking, in twos and threes, about anything at all, this part of Connie was done with, they had living to do. But already people were drifting toward Willard, closing around him, and Molly and Donald John: they had information now, the latest word.

  Murdock hung back. One thing he was certain of: you didn’t meet anyone on the other side, loved or unloved, this was the only side there was. Con’s ashes sat in a shiny wooden box pearled with damp, a thick white birch leafed overhead. Long lost to the sky by now, Connie’s smoke, it had thinned out to what, to where? Nowhere? He was rooted here, but no family mourned him on this occasion. And here was he, Red Murdock MacLennan, who, with all his faults and failings, could do with the rest of this foggy morning whatever he damn well pleased. That’s all death was about, wasn’t it, for the living? I can keep going? I’ll see another morning, sour or sweet, the final understanding (or misunderstanding?) postponed, free to do whatever I fancy? Whisky on my lips, weather on my face, I could still take up something solid in my hands, a hammer, a bottle, a rock, a woman by the waist, an armload of marijuana. Breathe deeply, my man, leave these graves behind, walk home, slow as you like, out where the sea spreads wide, what’s to stop you?

  He’d brought Rosaire here after they got serious, just to show her the names, and though he’d joked about it, Come meet the dead of my family, she had to know who he belonged to and his ties to these families from around. On that evening, long before she took sick, when he stood with her in the chilly dusk, she had read aloud, because she liked it, an inscription on a gravestone for a woman near her age who’d died in 1904: Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself, for thy Lord shall be thy everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Rosaire and himself were quiet then, and what after all was
to be said? Suddenly she pulled his face to hers and kissed him hard on the mouth. But we are alive, she said, me and you together.

  Rosaire. Woman of my life.

  People touched him and wandered away, he murmured goodbye, goodbye, see you after, take care of yourselves. Anna was gone from the shore but he could see where her feet had disturbed the sand. He had to seek her out soon, say to her, Let’s carry that stuff away for good, Anna, it’s time.

  XXVI.

  MURDOCK WAS CHANGING OUT of his suitclothes when the phone rang and he ran downstairs in his shirttail and shorts. He was glad to hear Anna’s voice.

  “I saw the people up there at the cemetery,” she said. “I wish I’d gone. I didn’t know.”

  “You swam. I saw you.”

  “I feel better now with this wind blowing the sun around, it’s so warm. I was watching shadows of leaves flickering on my floor, everything full of clean light, and I thought, how could anything bad happen?”

  “We don’t know what’s coming down or when, Anna.”

  “Someone rang me up today, two different times. They hung up when I answered. Not a salesman, I would guess.”

  He told her about Billy, about Livingstone and the people who were unhappy with him. “We won’t see him, I don’t think, not while the sun is up. Might see somebody else, of course. If Billy doesn’t talk.”

  “I need a bigger scarecrow, I guess.”

  “How about me?”

  “Oh, Murdock, you’re my husband, remember? You should be here anyway. You could answer the phone in your deep voice.”

  “Come over here this evening. We’ll plan our next move.”

  “I would love to do that. I’m ready. I’ve been packing up my drawings, I’m mailing them in town this afternoon and …” Her voice lost its cheerfulness, as if she were not yet sure what this meant. Murdock suddenly felt foolish standing there in his underwear.

  “Come anytime that suits you, Anna.”

  HER CAR rocked slowly down the road to Red Murdock’s, she could feel a splash here and there in the floorboards, her headlights begging something to lurch from the trees. She almost wished for some noisy confrontation that would shake loose the solemn weight of the evening. Near suppertime there’d been a quick white squall, pelting rain for a few minutes, then the late sun rushed out behind it, magnified by a bare washed sky, everything sparkling, window screens beaded with drops. The moon was just an ivory glow behind the St. Aubin hills in the south.